The Hand That First Held Mine

by Maggie O'Farrell

  A clashing noise from the house makes her look up. And there is Ted, in the kitchen window, framed in the act of lifting a pan from the stove. He is here this week, she remembers now, he’s taken time off work.

  She turns back to the baby. She touches the hair on his temples, which is inexplicably turning from dark to light, she strokes the curve of his cheek, she rests a hand on his chest and feels his lungs fill, flatten, fill, flatten.

  A squirrel with a grey-flecked tail darts from a flowerpot to the wall of her studio, its clawed feet gripping the wood as it shunts itself up to the roof and then away. The scrolled white petals of the calla lilies in the pot shiver with the vibrations.

  She must have turned her head too quickly because the colours of the garden, of the baby’s suit seem to blaze brighter for a few seconds. And now Ted is coming out of the house and, in the bright sunlight, the shape of him seems to shimmer and bifurcate and, for a moment, it is as if there is another person there, hovering just behind him. He walks across the grass and the shape seems to follow him.

  ‘OK,’ he is saying, ‘get this down you. Pasta al limone, made with fresh—’ He catches sight of her face. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Elina pulls her mouth into a smile. It is important to reassure him. ‘I think I need my sunglasses.’

  The house is dark and shadowed after the glare of the garden. Unfamiliar, almost. She stares about her as if seeing it for the first time. That vase, the orange bowl, the jute rug with a million tiny loops. She tiptoes past all these things that are hers but don’t look like hers, through the kitchen and up the stairs. On the landing, she thinks: I am alone in the house. She stops for a moment, one hand resting on the banisters. She feels light, insubstantial, the air circulating around her empty arms.

  She has tried to talk to Ted. She had thought it might help. He is at home this week, and the next. They are together, all day and all night, the two of them and the baby. She sits on the sofa, mostly, and breastfeeds. Ted cooks. Ted loads the washing-machine. Ted takes the baby out for walks in his pram and then she can sleep. She sleeps in short, snatched bursts – on the sofa, in a chair, in bed if she’s lucky – and these naps are animated by hectic, speedy dreams, most often on the subject of losing the baby or being unable to reach the baby, or sometimes there are abstract images of fountains. Fountains of red liquid. These she wakes from with a jolt, with a galloping heart.

  So Ted is at home, with her, the shoot is over, and she has tried to talk to him. She tried last night as they sat at the table, eating a takeaway. Ted had been cradling his son, hand bent back on itself so that the baby was able to keep his grip on Ted’s thumb and she had liked to see that, that Ted had thought that the baby needed to hold his thumb and should continue to do so. And she had been close to him and she had put down her fork and touched his arm and said, ‘Ted, do you know how much it was that I lost?’

  ‘How much of what?’ he’d said, without looking up from his plate.

  ‘You know.’ She waited before saying: ‘Blood.’

  His head swung up to look at her and she had waited some more. But he hadn’t said anything.

  ‘I mean,’ she prompted, ‘at the birth. The caesarian. Did the doctors tell you because—’

  ‘Four pints,’ he said flatly.

  There had been a pause. Elina pictured those four pints lined up, as if in milk bottles: clear, greenish glass holding that startling, jewel-scarlet liquid. In the fridge, placed on a shelf, on a doorstep, in a supermarket display cabinet. Four pints. She toyed with her food, took a mouthful, stole a glance at Ted. He was sitting with his head bent, looking either at the baby or at his plate, she couldn’t tell which, his hair obscuring his face.

  ‘I couldn’t see you at the time,’ she’d tried again. ‘You must have been over near the baby.’

  He gave a noise of assent.

  She picked up a silver-foil carton and, seeing it was full of chopped onion, put it down again. ‘Could you see much?’ she had asked, because she wanted to know, she wanted to hear him say it, she wanted to get whatever was in his head out so they could look at it together, so they could try to thaw this thing that had seemed to solidify between them. He hadn’t answered so she had said, ‘Ted? How much did you see?’ He had put down his fork and said: ‘I don’t really want to talk about this.’

  ‘But I do,’ she’d said.

  ‘Well, I don’t.’

  ‘But it’s important, Ted. We shouldn’t just brush it away as if it never happened. I want to understand – is that so bad? I want to know why it happened and—’

  He pushed back his chair and left the table. In the kitchen he turned, the tiny form of the baby clutched in his arms. His face had been stricken, unrecognisable, and Elina had felt a hot pulse of fear – for him, for the baby. She wanted to say, OK, forget it, let’s not talk about it, just sit down. Most of all, she wanted to say, Ted, give me the baby.

  ‘They don’t know why it happened.’ He was almost shouting. ‘I – I – I asked them the next day and they said they didn’t know, that it was just one of those things.’

  ‘All right,’ she tried to say soothingly. ‘It doesn’t—’

  ‘And I said, you can’t say that, don’t you dare say that. She nearly died, for Chrissake, and all you can say is just one of those things? You let her go for three days before realising the baby’s jammed in some impossible position and then you let some fucking student carve her up and—’

  He had stopped short. He stood in the kitchen and she had thought for a moment that he might cry. But he didn’t. He came towards her, where she sat at the table. He handed her the baby and, without looking at her, he left the room. She heard him go upstairs. There was silence for a while. Elina sat tight on her chair. Then she had heard him opening cupboards, shutting doors and from these sounds she had known he was getting ready to go out for a run. She had heard him descend the stairs, then the front door slam and she had heard his feet, pounding the pavement, as he sprinted away up the street.

  She finds the sunglasses on the bathroom shelf and is just about to pick them up when she realises that her body is moving quickly: it is turning and walking her towards the door, it is starting to carry her down the stairs. It takes her a second or two to work out why. The baby is crying, a thin, winding cry snaking in through the bathroom window. It surprises her that her body had heard and recognised this before she was aware of it.

  Out in the garden, Ted is sitting on the rug. He has picked up the baby and is holding him gingerly in both hands. The baby is a tiny, angry automaton, legs and hands working like levers in the air, the cries regular, each one crescendoing at shriek-pitch.

  Elina moves over the grass, bends and lifts him with one movement. His body feels rigid and his cries broaden into outrage. How could you? he seems to be saying. How could you leave me like that? She places him over her shoulder and walks to the garden wall and back, saying, ‘Sssh, sssh, it’s all right, sssh, sssh.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Ted is standing up now. ‘I didn’t know what to . . . I wasn’t sure if he was hungry or not or whether . . .’

  ‘It’s all right.’ She passes him on her way back to the wall and sees that he is watching her, anxiety gathered in his face.

  ‘Do you want me to take him?’ Ted says.

  The baby’s cries are subsiding into shuddering breaths. Elina shifts his position so that he is looking up at the sky. ‘No,’ she says. ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘Is he hungry?’

  ‘I don’t think so. He only fed . . . I don’t know . . . half an hour ago.’

  They sit down again on the rug and Elina sees the bowl of pasta. She’d forgotten about it. She puts on the sunglasses and, placing the baby so that he is looking over her shoulder, starts to eat with her spare hand. He clutches at the collar of her shirt, snuffs his wet mouth into the skin of her neck, his breath sounding hot in her ear.

  ‘It’s amazing how you can do that,’ Ted says.

  ‘What?’
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  ‘That.’ He indicates the baby with his fork.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He’s crying – really crying – and you come along and pick him up and he stops. Like magic. Like a spell. It’s only with you. He doesn’t do it with me.’

  ‘Doesn’t he?’

  ‘No. I can’t get him to stop like you can, it’s—’

  ‘That’s not true. I’m sure you can—’

  ‘No, no.’ Ted shakes his head. ‘It’s a special thing you have with him. It’s like he has this internal timer that measures how long he hasn’t seen you and without warning it can just go off and nothing else will mollify him.’ He shrugs. ‘I’ve been noticing it this week.’

  Elina thinks about this. The baby, sucking her shirt, seems to be thinking about it too. ‘It’s probably just these,’ she says, gesturing at her breasts.

  Ted shakes his head again, grinning. ‘No, although I wouldn’t blame him. But it’s not that, I promise you. It’s like . . . it’s like he needs a dose of you at regular intervals. To check you’re still there. To check you haven’t gone anywh—’ He breaks off in mid-sentence. Elina glances up at him. Ted is kneeling on the rug, a forkful of pasta halfway to his mouth. He is motionless, his face screwed up.

  ‘Hey,’ she says, ‘are you OK?’

  He puts down his fork with a clatter. ‘Fine . . . Just feel a bit . . .’

  ‘A bit what?’

  ‘Just . . .’ He presses both hands to his eyes. ‘I just get this . . . thing sometimes where . . .’

  Elina puts down her own fork. ‘Where what?’

  ‘Where my eyes go a bit funny.’

  ‘Your eyes?’

  ‘It’s really nothing,’ he murmurs. ‘It’s fine. I’ve . . . I’ve had it . . . all my life.’

  ‘All your life?’ she repeats. What can he mean, all his life? She puts down the baby on the rug and crouches next to Ted. She touches his back, moves her hand up and down his spine. ‘How long does it last?’ she asks, after a while.

  Ted is still hunched into himself, shielding his eyes. ‘Not long,’ he gets out. ‘Any minute now. Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘It’s weird, it hasn’t happened for—’

  ‘Ssh,’ she says. ‘Don’t talk. Shall I get you some water?’

  When she comes back with a glass he has straightened up. He is sitting staring at the baby, his head tilted, frowning. She hands him the water. ‘How are you? Are your eyes OK again?’

  He nods.

  ‘What was that?’ She touches her hand to his forehead. ‘ Ted, you’re freezing and – what’s the word – damp?’

  ‘Clammy,’ he mutters.

  ‘Clammy,’ she says. ‘I think you should go to the doctor.’

  He takes a sip of the water and grunts.

  ‘You must.’

  ‘No, it’s fine. I’m fine.’

  ‘You’re not fine.’

  ‘I am.’ He shakes his hair out of his eyes, looks up at her. ‘I’m fine,’ he says again. ‘Really.’ He puts his arm around her, kisses her neck. ‘Don’t look so worried. It’s nothing at all, just—’

  ‘It doesn’t sound like nothing.’

  ‘It is. I used to have them all the time when I was a child. Haven’t had one for years and years until the other day and—’

  ‘This happened the other day? And you didn’t tell me?’

  ‘Elina,’ he takes both her hands in his, ‘it’s nothing. I promise.’

  ‘You need to see a doctor.’

  ‘I’ve seen every doctor there is to see about this. When I was young. I’ve had eye-scans and brain-scans and everything-scans. Ask my mother.’

  ‘But, Ted—’

  At that moment, the baby starts to sob from his position on the rug.

  ‘Look,’ Ted says, ‘the internal timer’s gone off.’

  And later that day, or perhaps the next – it’s hard to tell because she hasn’t been to sleep – Elina sits on the sofa, the length of her spine resting against cushions, her feet planted together on the carpet. In one hand, she is feeling the heaviness of a glass paperweight.

  It is a near-perfect sphere, flattened out at the base so that it sits without rolling on a table-top. It has hundreds of tiny bubbles in it. Elina holds it up to her eye and peers through it at a murky, distant, greenish place with holes in its atmosphere the shape of tears.

  She likes this paperweight, the cold, clear heft of it. She likes the way that the air from the room in which it was made, on the day it was made, is trapped inside it for ever. Perhaps even air breathed out by the person who made it. It fits so exactly to her palm and it must be the size of the head of an unborn baby at – what? – six months? Five? She would like to photograph it, from very close range. She must do that soon. One day. Where is her camera anyway? Out in the studio? She should look for it, put it somewhere safe. She would like to capture the secret, still space inside the paperweight. She would like to squeeze inside it.

  She laces both hands underneath it and lets her gaze drift up into the room.

  ‘And I tried to tell her,’ Ted’s mother is saying from the other sofa, twisted round to address Ted, who is in the kitchen, ‘that the reason why she hasn’t received a card from me is that you just will not decide on a name. But she wasn’t having any of it. Very mardy, she was.’ Ted’s mother twitches then smooths the cuff of her blouse and Elina sees that she is trying to mask her irritation. ‘Have you had any more thoughts on what you’ll call him?’

  Ted makes some unintelligible reply from inside the fridge.

  Elina blinks. She is experiencing, just for a second, the sensation of having someone’s hands up inside your skin, near your ribs, pushing, pushing at something. She blinks again to make it go away.

  Ted’s mother turns back to the room, shifting herself against the sofa. She’d said when they’d first bought it that it would never be comfortable as there was no head support. Elina wonders now if she is feeling the lack of cushioning in her cranial area.

  ‘Well,’ she says, ‘I never thought that by the time my grandson was almost a month old I still wouldn’t be able to send out cards. All my relatives are dying to get one.’

  ‘Why don’t you just send them?’ Ted’s father says, with only a hint of gritted teeth, from behind a newspaper. And Elina is surprised to see him because it’s rare for Ted’s parents to come together: they usually operate on separate schedules.

  ‘Yeah,’ Ted says, as he comes in, carrying a tray. ‘They don’t have to have his name on, do they?’

  His mother gasps, as if they are suggesting something lewd. ‘Not have his name on? Of course they must have his name on!’

  Ted shrugs and starts to pour the tea.

  ‘What about Rupert?’ his mother says brightly. ‘I’ve always loved the name Rupert and it’s an old family name on my side.’

  ‘Sounds like . . . a whatdyoucallit?’ Ted’s father says, folding up the newspaper and tossing it to the floor.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A . . .’ Ted’s father puts his hand to his brow ‘. . . you know . . . a thing that children take to bed. Um . . . Brideshead . . . um . . . teddy-bear! That’s it. A teddy-bear.’ He reaches down and picks up the newspaper again. ‘It sounds like a teddy-bear,’ he says, as he scans the front page for the second time.

  ‘What does?’ his mother says.

  ‘The name Rupert.’

  Elina hears the word: clamp. She hears: rupture. She hears: stargazer presentation.

  Ted makes another uninterpretable noise, then says, ‘Here’s your tea. How have things been with you? Been busy this week?’

  ‘Or Ralph. How about Ralph? He looks like a Ralph. And it was my grandfather’s middle name. It has a lovely ring to it. It would go well with the surname, too.’

  ‘Um.’ Ted glances at Elina. She keeps her face very still; she shifts the paperweight in her hands. The glass surface has become warm to the touch. She can see Ted debating whether t
o broach this or not, then she sees him decide to take the plunge. ‘Actually,’ he says, handing his parents cups of tea, ‘we’ve decided to give him Elina’s surname. He’ll be a Vilkuna.’

  When Ted’s mother came to visit at the hospital, the baby was three hours old. Elina can remember it all now. With her one free arm, Elina was holding him against her chest, where he was asleep, his limbs folded under him, his face pressed up against her skin. Her other arm was bandaged and wrapped into a mysterious chrysalis. Tubes came in and came out again. Various bags were suspended above her head. From under the blanket, there were more tubes entering and leaving her. She wasn’t yet allowing herself to think about where those ones were going in.